West Seattle filmmaker Ellen Frick chronicles ‘Patriot Guard Riders’

On this Memorial Day, a unique American group serving fallen heroes and their families is the focus of a West Seattle filmmaker’s newest work – which is days away from its first Puget Sound screenings.

The Patriot Guard Riders’ members, hundreds of thousands strong, are motorcyclists – mostly Vietnam veterans, Ellen explains, who first came to fame for protecting fallen soldiers’ families from the hate-spouting Westboro Baptist Church, which has sent representatives to funerals to claim the soldiers died because of America’s failure to outlaw homosexuality.

“I read about it in TIME magazine, the bikers in Oklahoma who started going to the funerals nad blocking the protesters. I thought, wow, this is really odd bedfellows … you don’t think of bikers as coming to the rescue so much,” Ellen recalled. “I started looking into it and didn’t know if it was really a film. (But) the story is so rich,” with the motorcyclists going on to expand their mission.

First, some of her backstory – which itself is multifaceted:

(Photo courtesy Ellen Frick, at center)
Ellen has lived in West Seattle for 30 years. Her filmmaking career has spanned only a third of that. “I used to be an environmental engineer. I specialized in landfills, recycling, solid waste … I’ve only been making films for 10 years; I switched my life over.”

The spark for that switchover: She was diagnosed with breast cancer and asked herself, “Is (environmental engineering) really what I want to be doing?” She took a nine-month filmmaking class through the University of Washington Extension and interned at KCTS-Channel 9, typing transcripts (a task of which she observes, laughing, “I have people doing that for me now”).

“Patriot Guard Riders” has been in the works for two years, Ellen says. While bookings are now multiplying, when we spoke, it had only been screened about half a dozen times, all outside this area, including an IMAX theater in Galveston, Texas, and a theater in Evansville, Indiana, the setting for about a third of the film, as the story is told of a bereaved mother who joins the Patriot Guard Riders after they provide protection from protesters at her son’s funeral.

(Photo courtesy Ellen Frick)
While the rides began primarily as that means of protection, and then evolved into a way for veterans to ensure that “never again” will war returnees – dead or alive – be reviled like those from Vietnam, Ellen says the Patriot Guard Riders have acquired another mission: “Now what it’s really become is this huge place for healing among those veterans who talk to each other about their post-traumatic stress.” A Vietnam veteran from Portland, she notes, is among the main characters.

In her film, the Westboro Baptist representatives have their say as well. “We had amazing access to the Westboro compound – we interviewed Shirley Phelps, daughter of (the preacher) Fred Phelps. They’re all civil-rights attorneys. Then we did a ridealong with them to protest at a funeral in Iowa, while we had another team with the bikers.”

Ellen observes, “It’s been a really tough film to structure – so many issues, and how do you make sense of it?” Then of course, is the matter of funding. “It’s pretty much self-funded. We’ve gotten a couple of grants, nothing big, there’s not that much money (available).” But they’ve raised some by selling patches, and offering pre-orders for DVDs of the film. (You can contribute in those ways, or others, through this page of the film’s official website.)

And the film has a natural marketing contingent – the Patriot Guard Riders’ captains, who are in every state. “They want to have screenings,” Ellen said, while noting she can’t be present for all of them, nor does she have to be – just as long as, “I always make sure there’s a Patriot Guard Rider and a Gold Star parent [one who has lost a child].”

The venues have ranged from the aforementioned Texas IMAX to “the back of some Harley shops in Kentucky.” Making the film has introduced her to communities she had not previously encountered: “I had not ever known a Harley-Davidson owner before, and did not know anyone in the Army; I was just in (the) little liberal Seattle cocoon.”

In a world with which Ellen is familiar, she is a leader in the local film community, currently chairing the Seattle Documentary Association, “getting people out to know each other, and to help with works-in-progress screenings.”

For now, the focus is on getting her new work out to audiences. The film’s Facebook page calls next weekend’s Tacoma screening its West Coast premiere; it’s at 7 pm Saturday at the Rialto Theater, with tickets available online; the next night, at 7 pm Sunday, it screens during the STIFF film festival, at Northwest Film Forum on Capitol Hill (map), with ticket information here.

Getting the 73-minute documentary seen means a fulfillment of Ellen’s mission: “My hope is to get the message out. … The thing that really warms my heart about (the Patriot Guard Riders) is that they expanded their mission to stand on the sidelines at any veteran’s funeral where they are invited. Even World War II funerals, where they are the only people there. We say, from the greatest evil has come the greatest good. (The Westboro Baptist protesters) have become largely irrelevant.”

Great article! I’m remembering my father today. He was a career military officer who served in WWII and Korea. We fought over the Viet Nam War when I was a teenager, but he would love the Patriot Guard! ALL veterans and their families deserve our respect and gratitude.

I have seen a documentary on the Phelps family called “The Most Hated Family in Amnerica.”

In the documentary is a perfect example of how hate is taught. One of the little kids protesting is asked a question about something along the lines of why God does not like gay people. The kid stumbles for an answer and then looks to one of the adults who then feeds the child the answer in which the child parrots back to the interviewer.
That’s a form of child abuse in my opinion and it is sad. And one of the teenagers at the end of the documentary asks why people hate her family so much? I think something I read once kind of says it all, “The cost of giving is receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.”

The Westboro clan are nothing more than an extortion ring parading around as religious types. The whole family is made up of attorneys. The plan is to be so offensive, municipalities have no choice but to try and censor them. As soon as that happens, the 1st Amendment shake-down begins. They have made a lot of money at this and they know exactly what they are doing.

Thank you so much for sharing! I’m on my way to Tahoma in a bit with my brother and some friends to remember Jarod Newlove. Last time I was there, I had the pleaseure of observing the Patriot Riders and it was moving to say the least.

I’ve always understood the importance of Memorial Day, but it wasnt until I married a military man and felt the worry and fear of “not knowing” while my husband was deployed for 15 months in Afghanistan, that I began to FEEL this holiday’s true meaning. This year, for the first time, I will visit the grave of a soldier who isn’t coming back. I will think about him as that smart ass kid, with his hat slightly to the side and always a big smile, that I knew as a teenager. I’ll think about his older brother, my friend, knowing that the mixture of pride and grief he must feel today weighs heavy. I’ll think of my own younger brother and his friends, mourning a loss and feeling Memorial Day in a very personal way for the first time as well. I’ll think of my own husband and how proud of him I am and how lucky we are that he came home safe. I’ll think of Jarod’s kids and how innocent they are and how unfair it is that they lost him before they could know him. I’ll think of his wife, who’s shoes I can only imagine walking in…though I don’t think I could ever do it with as much strength and grace as I’ve seen from her in the last 10 months. And finally, as I look around the cemetary, I’ll be thinking of all the other lives lost too soon and the loved ones who have paid the ultimate price.